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Monday, October 20, 2014

Literary Movement Reading Challenge 2015 - Announcement

For next
year, 2015, I have a very ambitious plan for reading challenge. Actually, I
have had this idea earlier this year, and since then I have been doing some
research, collecting titles, and brewing a perfect concept for this challenge.
It will be called:

Literary Movement
Reading Challenge

The aim is
to study how our literary world has been evolving from Medieval era up to the present.
There are so many lists/timelines out there, but I particularly use this literary periods timeline from online-literature dot com; firstly,
it is simple and nicely presented, and secondly because the number of the
movements fits more or less with the challenge purpose. If you see the
info-graphic, there are thirteen movements. I will dedicate each month for each
movement; but as the Beat Generation period is mostly overlapping the
Bloomsbury's, I will merge them into one month.

The
challenge concept would be like this:

1. Reading
(or rereading)at least one book
each month according to the literary movements we are covering; here is the
list:

2. To learn about each movement, you can click
the link on the above list, it will direct you to pages I have created for each
movement. I gathered the information from Wikipedia and/or online-literature,
or other sources. If you want to have more details, you can click the sources links
as well.

3. Just as other movements, time period of literary
movement might be overlapping one another. And one author could be influenced
by more than one movement. For example, I put Dostoyevsky in Existentialism, but
he might be regarded also as a Realist.

Q:
So, in what month should I put him?

A: Pick one of them, and read the book, after
that you can analyze, in what movement Dostoyevsky shall be put.

Q: What if I have put him in the wrong
movement/month, must I move the post to the right one?

A: No need to do that, this challenge IS to learn
about the movements. See point 4 next.

4. Brief
analysis - Inside your review, you are required
to add brief (or long if you like) analysis about the book/author you have read,
to answer these questions:

c. If he/she doesn’t fit, who do you think would
fit better? Again, the reason, please...
d. [optional] What do you think about this literary movement? How did it correlate with our civilization?

This
way we can learn more about the literary movements, from others’ reviews as
well as ours.

5. As the goal is to learn how literary (and
the civilization) have been evolving, you are required to read according to the
movements in the fixed order.

6. A linky will be opened on the 15th of each month for each
movement post, and will be closed on the
15th of the next month.

7. The
champions will be they who (would be announced after the challenge is
closed):

a. Read at least one book for each movement (at
least 12 movements); the more the better.

b. Submit their reviews according to the
movements, in time.

8. The challenge focus is not how many books we’d
read, but whether we could manage to read for all the movements in the right
order, in the right time. This need courage and discipline, so we deserve some incentive.
How about a book that you have been dreaming on? At the end of the challenge
(only if the participants are at least 5 excluding me), I will pick one winner randomly from the champions
(see point 7), to win: 1 (one) copy of
your dream book of $20 or less from The Book Depository. Yeah,
unfortunately, only one winner would get the prize, but if you want, YOU can
set your own prize you would reward yourself if you succeeded the challenge!

9. So, are you sure you really want to do this?
I don’t…. But, I am going to do it anyway, as “life—says the wise Forrest Gump—is
like a box of chocolate, you’ll never know what you’ll get!” Maybe I would
enjoy the challenge very much; or maybe I would be much enlightened after this;
well…at least, I would be able to say, that… I have never failed on MY own
challenges. How’s that??

10. If you’d like to join, just submit your
blog/Goodreads (where you would post your reviews) link in the comment box below. I would update list of participants under this post.

For any feedback/question/discussion, just write in the comment
box or mention @Fanda_A at Twitter, using hashtag: #LitMoveRC.

Hi there, Fanda! I love this idea! I saw this a couple of days ago and have been wondering about it. I haven't too much time to read full fledged novels, but I'm hoping, to perhaps, read poetry for this challenge? I figured this would be a great way for me to acquaint myself with a few poets (and in some cases re-acquaint myself). Would that be alright?

Hey Fanda, I can't seem to see your Linky. I can see that you and Ruth have signed up but not a place to put mine. So here's my link and I'll check back: http://howlingfrog.blogspot.com/2014/11/fanda-at-classiclit-has-got-lovely-new.html

Sorry Jean, there's been a problem with the linky. I decided to use this comment box for sign up. You can see the participants in the list under the post (I'll keep it updated). I have also put your link there.

I'm jumping in! Thanks Fanda. Hope I have a more successful time next year. I have managed to not read the history books I wanted for your history challenge this year. I still did read non-fiction history books, just not what I had set-out to read.

Help, I'm trying to figure out how to make this work for me. I already have a book group and some read-alongs that have books scheduled, so I don't think I can make the months work with the periods. I could probably make the periods work throughout the year though. But that would mean that I'd only be half-participating. I'm not sure what do to ...... back to the old schedule to try to move some things around .....

This sounds like such a wonderful challenge ..... it would be a shame to miss it!

Cleo, the idea is to read the periods in consecutive order, to study the movements. If you can work this out, but not within the scheduled month, that would still be fine (for example you skip Jan, but read medieval in Feb, Rennaisance in Mar, and somehow could finish the Post-Modernism in Dec). You would not be eligible to enter the giveaway, but you'll complete the challenge anyway. That's the main point. It's of course up to you, but I would be happy if you'd join in! ;)

Hi A, welcome to the blogging world! :) It's always nice to have a new book blogger friend. Of course it's OK, that's what we are all doing here, to challenge ourselves to do what we normally reluctant to. Hope you'll enjoy this challenge. Thanks for participating!

am very interested in this challenge and will be writing sign up post fairly soon - I have been checking out books and movements - I had a fancy to read British authors for each movement and catch up on my own islands:) so far so good - however, I fear I will fail in finding a transcendentalism author from here as it appears to be only an American movement so have found one of my father's books which will cover it -looking forward to joining you all:)

Your new challenge for 2015 has inspired me :-) I haven't decided on all the books yet, but I'm sure interesting new authors will present themselves along the way. Thanks for hosting another wonderful reading challenge, Fanda!

cannot get the linky to work for me - have posted on http://albertareads.wordpress.com a general round up of my challenges this year with links to relevent sites and plans for the challenge - I will get a page ready for each one where I can list my books - the general review though will be on the address I gave

Thank you Fanda for this beautiful challenge! I'm in for sure!! I've just started reading Peter Abelard's ((1079-1142), )"The Story of My Misfortunes" (Historia Calamitatum), and I think I will also read Monmouth's "The History of the Kings of Britain" (c. 1136).